Ali Hassan Majid

Iraq's three-member Presidency Council has approved the execution of Ali Hassan Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein known as "Chemical Ali," said a high-ranking Iraqi government official today who was not authorized to speak on the subject. The official said there was no date set for the hanging, which must be carried out within 30 days. He also said the Presidency Council had agreed only to the execution of Majid, not two codefendants also convicted in June of genocide and other crimes.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's office lashed out Friday at the Iraqi presidential council for refusing to approve the executions of two of the three men sentenced to hang for the genocidal campaign against Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority during Saddam Hussein's rule. The public dispute highlighted the persistent rancor between Iraq's major ethnic and religious factions, which continues to paralyze the highest levels of government nearly five years after Hussein's fall.

The location was a secret. The timing was unannounced. The prosecutors were not identified as they stood silently in the chilly marble and granite courtroom, facing defendants secured in a steel pen. For all the trepidation surrounding the televised conclusion Sunday of post-invasion Iraq's biggest trial, it was a stooped man with a cane whom everyone focused on, and he needed no introduction as he was brought in to hear his fate.

A cousin and top deputy of executed former President Saddam Hussein denied opening fire on Iraqi civilians during a Shiite uprising in 1991 but acknowledged executing an Iranian national accused of sabotage. Ali Hassan Majid is known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison gas attacks on Kurds, a crime for which he has been sentenced to death. He is among 15 Hussein-era officials on trial for the 1991 crackdown that led to the killing of tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims. Majid disputed witness accounts that he and Iraqi soldiers opened fire on peaceful Shiite protesters in Basra, saying he targeted gunmen.

Iraqi judges interrogated the notorious ex-general known as "Chemical Ali" and the former defense minister Saturday, opening the first phase in trials of Saddam Hussein's top deputies. Insurgents, meanwhile, targeted election offices and wounded four U.S. contractors in a roadside bomb attack. In the northern city of Mosul, an improvised explosive device missed a passing U.S. convoy and exploded near a school bus, killing one student and injuring six, U.S. officials said.

Advances by U.S. and British troops into southern Iraq on Friday chipped away at the base of one of Saddam Hussein's most notorious lieutenants, a man known as "Chemical Ali" who pioneered the regime's use of chemical warfare against civilians and who has been charged with defending the area now under attack.

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that interrogations of Iraqi prisoners indicated that Ali Hassan Majid, the official known as "Chemical Ali," might still be alive. Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had said April 7 that they believed an airstrike on a house in southern Iraq had killed Majid. They showed reporters video of laser-guided bombs obliterating the house where a tipster told coalition forces Majid was staying.

Ali Hassan Majid, the notorious cousin of Saddam Hussein who earned the nickname "Chemical Ali" for using poisonous gas to kill thousands of Kurds, has been captured, the U.S. military said Thursday. Majid, who at one point in the Iraq war had been reported killed, ranked fifth on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi figures. He was the most powerful member of the former dictator's inner circle still at large, save Hussein himself.